


ashes to ashes, and demons to hell

by Random_ag



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Cults, Insanity, Mild Blood, Murder, Non-Graphic Violence, this IS actually about batim, unlike many of my batim fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 23:46:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18041384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: He smiled tiredly at the not exactly towering woman, her brows knit together in angered annoyance. That look really didn’t age a day.“Good morning to you too, Niamh.”“Good mornin’ me arse. I’ve had to go ‘n’ check the whole Studios three times ‘cause none a’ these idiots seem t’ want t’ work today, ‘n’ on top a’ that I had t’ wait fer ye to take yer sweet-arse time to come over like I got nothin’ else t’ do.”-Alternatively titled "Joey's Fuckery Gets Him - Ashes Edition"





	ashes to ashes, and demons to hell

Henry walked into the Studios and took a long, long breath. The building hadn’t lost its smells of ink and wood; of all the things he had almost missed of the time he spent there, that was one of his favourites.

 

“About feckin’ goddamn time.”

 

Another was that greeting.

He smiled tiredly at the not exactly towering woman, her brows knit together in angered annoyance. That look really didn’t age a day.

“Good morning to you too, Niamh.”

“Good mornin’ me arse. I’ve had to go ‘n’ check the whole Studios three times ‘cause none a’ these idiots seem t’ want t’ work today, ‘n’ on top a’ that I had t’ wait fer ye to take yer sweet-arse time to come over like I got nothin’ else t’ do.”

Henry really, really didn’t want to laugh in her face, but the way her accent took over her words was impossible not to chuckle a little at.

Niamh squinted her eyes in a glare, still furious, but soon enough she sighed, and her rigid shoulders slumped in a more relaxed manner: “I’m so focken’ happy t’ see ya again, Henry.”

“Me too.” he replied, pulling her in a hug. “To what do I owe your request to come back to this sleepless nightmare house?”

“Business stuff. I need ya t’ do us a solid.” she replied. She freed herself from the friendly grasp and motioned him to follow her down the stairs.

They were reaching the third floor when an uncomfortable itching manifested on his back. He turned; someone, a boy who could have very well been a janitor by the looks of it, stood still as stone at the other end of the room, staring at him with wide eyes (kind of glassy, lifeless) and a round, toothy grin. 

Something about that smile felt oddly familiar.

“Hi, Henry!” he said, voice hoarse and crackling. It made an uncanny sound.

Henry waved cautiously and turned to keep following Niamh. He looked back to the strange boy for barely a second, uneasy.

He’d vanished.

 

“Ya wanna come in or no?”

 

The ex-employee sat down. It was weird, almost funny, the way the scene must have looked: one in front of the other, her hair up in a bun, his hands fidgety and a little nervous. To think he was the one who hired her, and now  _she_  looked ready to hire  _him_.

For a second, Henry thought she would have taken out a resume and put on a pair of glasses to read it better.

But Niamh didn’t. She wore a cold, serious face and repressed her accent as she simply told him: “We need your company to buy us.”

His eyes widened: “You’re kidding me.” he breathed, “You can’t actually mean that.”

“We may not be sitting in the lap of bankruptcy, but we aren’t very far from it either.” she replied. “Plus, we’re struggling with new ideas. We’re planning the last two, maybe three episodes, and then we’re gonna be closing.”

It sounded so unnatural. Henry had to lay back on his chair, trying to get all of that to be processed.

“But, as you know, I’m not a stone cold piece of shit, and throwing all of us on the damn street - especially since we are not a merry band of good-for-nothing bastards - isn’t exactly how I want to end all of this.” Niamh locked her eyes with his. They looked firm.

“So… You want us… To buy Joey Drew Studios?”

It was unreal.

“Yes.”

“… That’s… Niamh, that’s insane.”

“We managed to clear almost half of our debts. For you guys it won’t even be too much of an expense. You know there’s some talent in here, Henry. Everybody’s gonna benefit. We could even bring Bendy back, maybe more succesfully than ever.”

It was…

“Did you tell Joey?”

The woman bit her lower lip.

Of course.

“He will never accept this.” Henry stated, suddenly regaining the strength that conversation had taken away from him. “This was his dream, his sole purpose in life! He wouldn’t sell it for a billion dollars, and we both know that.”

Niamh’s breath began deepening, but he didn’t notice.

“Does he even know I’m here? I bet he doesn’t. He swore he’d never let me set a single foot in here again. He doesn’t just forget a grudge, now, does he? No, he holds onto it as long as he pleases. You can’t do this whole thing behind his back, Jesus Christ! What if he enters right now, and sees me here?”

“That shouldn’t be a problem.”

“It should! Because I’d be getting kicked out and you’d be fired without a second thought!”

“He can’t really do that now-”

“Really? You mean to tell me  _Joey Drew_ , founder of this animation studio, wouldn’t throw a tantrum that would shake this place to the core if he found  _me_ , the man who  _‘betrayed’_  him, in his house and home?”

“I just said, he can’t do that-”

Henry jolted up, almost toppling his chair: “He’s your boss!”

“He  _was_!” she screamed back, standing up as well. Her icy eyes began burning. “He is not now!”

“Then where is he? Why didn’t you tell him anything? Why did you decide to sell or just close everything without having him know it?”

“BECAUSE HE’S-”

Niamh choked back the answer. She looked down to her feet, inhaling and exhaling deeply. Finally, she slowly raised her head, looking straight into her old friend’s eyes.

“Follow me.” she ordered, calmly.

They left the room and went down again.

Every attempt to ask something was dismissed by a rigid wave of her hands. Henry could hear the terrible rumble of his brain eating itself away in desperate curiosity with every unvoiced question.

 

“Hi Henry!”

 

He stopped with a jump, and looked around.

The boy who’d been staring at him before was now sitting in an open vent. He still had that so painfully familiar round smile on his cinnamon face spotted with moles and freckles.

(Henry noticed how it was as if the rest of his face didn’t exist. He’d already forgotten it after seeing it barely two minutes ago, and even now, standing in front of him, he couldn’t bring himself to take in his other features. He could only see dots, and cinnamon, and eyes, and a toothy grin.)

It was such a strange voice. It sounded as if it couldn’t help but keep craking back and forth between an adult’s and a teenager’s with every letter leaving the mouth, like a vocal mirror of the body it was attached to.

Deep in those wide eyes of amber and sky the animator could catch a glimpse of some kind of childlike innocence sparking from place to place, histerical.

He’d heard that voice before. At least, he thought so.

“Hi.” Henry replied, a little concern building up inside him, “Do we… Do we know each other?”

“Not much.” the other answered plainspokenly.

Immediately, he added: “But I’ve seen you.”

“Saw me?…”

That bicolor gaze was terribly uncomfortable.

He nodded without blinking.

“You killed Joey with an axe.”

The man paled.

“There was ink everywhere.” the boy continued, body fluidly lolling left and right in what seemed to be rising euphoria, “You swung and swung till he was still… It was very nice of you. Now the demon’s gone back to hell, and we’re all-”

A familiar stomping.

“Eska?” Niamh called.

The factotum turned sharply in her direction: “Here.” he bleated cheerfully, forgetting everything he was talking about to slide into her arms as she opened them.

She patted his back lovingly: “Sure ye are. Please don’t scare Henry more than you normally would.”

Eska let out a wheezy laugh, burying his head in the nook of her neck; some gibberish stumbled its way out of his mouth as if drunk. He seemed to be drooling a little.

“You know what time I think it is?”

He shook his head, still kind of giddy.

“I think it’s time to check if Kim remembered to bring yer meds with him. You wanna go check on that? Tell him I send you?”

He giggled a little more and finally left his soft anchor; a bit unstable, he scuttled back into the vent, slithering in the dark corridor like a lizard, his thumping and giggling slowly ceasing until it left the two old workers all by themselves.

“Don’t worry, it’s normal.” Niamh assured Henry, ungracefully dragging him away by the shoulder, “We still haven’t seen him go through a door.”

“You mean…?”

“Yes.”

“As in, that’s seriously…?”

“Yes.”

“He… He doesn’t look like himself.”

“He would if you’d been here for the past month.”

 

The little room they entered was bare. Only a couch on which Henry was made sit and a small table occupied it. In a corner laid something, a piece of paper left to its own misery, that Niamh collected and handed over to the former animator.

Just a grey drawing of Bendy.

He lifted an eyebrow and gave her a questioning look.

She didn’t flinch.

A thumb brushed over the little demon, catching a peculiar sensation. It felt like small grains rubbing his skin.

“Ashes.” the woman answered without him asking.

“What?”

“Ashes. They were supposed to stay hidden in a jar buried underground, but Eska had a bit of a… Creative moment, and mixed them with glue.”

Henry stared at Niamh in disbelief.

The staff manager grabbed the drawing, gently taking it away from him: “This… Is all that’s left of Joey Drew. That’s why I didn’t tell him anything.”

 

That was… That was a way to inform of someone’s passing.

 

“What happened to him?”

“He was stabbed to death. With a letter opener. We’re not sure who did it.”

“The weren’t any witnesses?”

“I mean, when Kim and Thomas broke down the door and barged in, there was only Eska screaming while covered in blood and Joey’s very dead, very stabbed body. So,  _maybe,_  there was one.”

Eska.

The mismatched eyes came back to his mind.

Blue and amber spotlights holding him down.

 

_You killed Joey with an axe._

 

“So he-”

“Oh, he could have!” Niamh interrupted him. Her tone was suddenly much higher, yet her voice wasn’t angry. “But he can’t for the love of himself remember anything from that day. And with nobody else in there, we can’t prove anything.”

“He was covered in blood!”

“I know.”

“He was the only other one in the room!”

“I know.”

“Then why do you deny it? Why do you say it wasn’t him?”

“I don’t.”

She raised her hand in the air, blocking him before he could say another word: “But. Even though - even  _if_  he did it, he… He knew something was wrong. With Joey, and all the ideas that ran around in his head. He… He knew why we had that damn machine.”

“What machine?”

“It- … Uhm. It was supposed to make ink, you know? Ink and… And big blobs of some weird shit.” Niamh held her face in one hand, eyes closed, reminiscing.

 

“It costed us an eye and a leg, but, he said, it was gonna pay off, and big time. So, well, it really didn’t. Then he went and decided we had to buy a new one, and this time, other than making Grant seriously ponder over throwing himself under the next train, it gave us 423 gallons of ink that made pipes break due to sheer pressure every Thursday.”

The animator furrowed his brows. That was a strange choice of investments, he concurred. But just why would Joey buy something like that? Did he really need so much ink?

Niamh seemed to have already asked herself that question several times. She stared into his eyes: “Wanna know? What was happening behind our backs?”

Henry waited.

“A cult. A cult was happening. And Joey knew, because Joey was the goddamn  _king_  of fucking Belzebendy fanatic club-town, or something like that. They were going goddamn gaga over demons, sacrifices for their ‘Lord and savior’ Bendy ‘n’ all that shit. And get this, the machine? It was supposed to turn people he killed into living breathing cartoons. Can you believe it? Can you believe this absolute bullshit?”

She kneeled in front of the table, face in her hands, utterly deprived of all energy. She sounded just one word away from breaking into tears.

“We had to fire almost half of employees. Before they did any damage or rumors were spread that we were a bunch a’ satanists. All thrown on the damn sidewalk. Sammy got to stay but he is on thin fucking ice. We returned the hellish thing, got our money back… At least that… And Norman…”

 

She gulped.

 

“Well, we found him. And got him in a damn hospital. A really good one. He’s… Doing better, now. I mean, being forced to stay soaked in ink for God knows how long with a bunch of fuckers coming over everyday to tell ye about their goddamn satanic ring of friendship and hitting ye to enforce the message would fuck up just everybody, but he’s getting that out of his sistem like a focken’ champ. I guess learning Joey got what doing all of his fuckery deserved helped.“

 

Neither could speak for a couple of minutes. The information seeped into the still air of the room slowly, like a layer of dust.

 

“Did Eska tell you about… All of this?”

“Oh, God, no. He just… The hallucinations, they gave him a bit of… Of an idea of what Drew was doing behind our backs. But, he didn’t talk about them much. We came across the whole plan while trying to find things to burn with the body.”

Their eyes met in the overbearing silence.

 

 

Joey Drew Studios was bought in less than two weeks, and in slightly more time Bendy cartoons managed to take over the spotlight despite the satanic rumors sorrounding their origins.

There was never any evidence to prove them.

Only the solitary case of a handyman who had thrown himself out of a window after allegedly experiencing demonic delusions sparked a little fire among skeptics and theorists.

 

But he was known for hallucinating often.


End file.
